DEVOTED SERVICE TO LEPERS

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28448, 30 November 1957, Page 10

DEVOTED SERVICE TO LEPERS

Wealthy Woman’s Work For Dr. Schweitzer

[From

ANTHEA GODDARD,

in London].

"C’OR a year now one of the richest young women in the world, Olga Deterding, . has been a devoted servant of Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s sick natives in a jungle clearing in equatorial Africa. Thin and sunburned, she is a very different woman today from the sleek millionairess who, a year ago. kept a suite at London’t Ritz Hotel, owned a villa staffed by 11 servants, bought her clothes from Balenciaga and Fath. Olga Deterding was always restless, mentally and physically—and she had the money to indulge her restlessness. Her father. Sir Henri Deterding, born a Dutchman, was one of the early oil kings. When he died in 1939 he left his daughter her £3 million. Olga Deterding is as at home in the world’s capitals as other people are in their own suburbs. She bought her clothes in Paris, wintered in Monte Carlo, flipped over to New York for a holiday when she felt like it, came to London for the season. On the surface she seemed a typical, flippant representative of her set. Plans For Safari But occasionally close' friends would be given a glimpse of another Olga: a woman who, as she approached 30, would say that she was aware she was getting older and had done nothing with her life. She was no beauty, but her strong personality made her noticeable in any company. So when she announced last year that she wanted to make a

safari through Africa, she had no trouble attracting volunteers to accompany her. Over a lunch at the Ritz in London she chose as companions her close girl-friend, Lavinia Lambton, and three young exHussars, John and Timothy Reynolds, and Robin Boyd. They worked out plans for a 15,000-mile safari by truck. The first surprise of the trip came about 10 days after the quintet had set out from London in their Land Rover. Olga announced that she had become engaged to a young French photographer named Henri Bertrand. whom she had known for about a year. When the safari reached French Equatorial Africa she contracted malaria. To Lambarene As she had to go into hospital, Lavinia and the men went on to Stanleyville in the Belgian Congo, where Olga had planned to fly on to meet them. But when they arrived all that awaited them was a telegram from her: “Gone to Lambarene, bitten by snake. Not to worry.” It seems that while she was in hospital, she read a book about Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his work in the leper colony of Lambarene, decided suddenly that this would provide the reason for living for which she had long been seeking. Impulsively, she travelled there, arriving up the river by canoe, and asked the old, white-haired humanitarian if she could work with him. She had no nursing or domestic experience, but he said simply: “We have always room for anyone willing to help.” Olga changed her Paris-made matador pants and shirt for a simple white dress, white socks and white topee, and settled down to become a maid-of-all-work at Lambarene.

At Christmas she wrote to her friend, Lavinia Lambton, that she thought Lambarene “is the only really Christian village in the world.” “Everybody,” she said, works only for love. No Europeans are paid.” “Never So Happy” Having decided on her mission, she made no concessions to her upbringing. Many eminent people, asked by her mother to visit her and send news, tried to see her, but she refused all of them, though they included the Pretender to the throne of France, the Comte de Paris, and the leader of the America Democrats, Adlai Stevenson. She lived in an iron-roofed hut, to which she retreated whenever anyone tried to pump her about her past life, or any inquiries arrived from the outside world. Reports filtered through from Lambarene that she had never been so happy. Now, after nearly a year, Olga has left Lambarene for the first time, and is on her way to Kenya, where she hopes this week to attend the wedding of Lavinia Lambton and Robin Boyd—one of the safari group. No-one knows, so far, whether she will return to work with Schweitzer—or whether she will now marry Henri Bernard. Whatever Henri Bernard plans for the future, it is certain that he must be prepared to meet a vastly changed Olga—no longer a social butterfly, but a woman who, at 31, has found spiritual reward in her life of service.— Associated Newspapers Feature Services. Unusual Bottle Whisky bottles vary in shape from the standard to the near fantastic. An entirely new venture in the standard line, however, is a triangular bottle introduced by a Glasgow firm, the x shape of which has taken two years to"perfect. According to Mr T. C. HayesPalmer, a representative of the firm, who is in Wellington at present, the bottle is unique in the history of the Scotch whisky distilling industry. The design, by Mr Hans Schlaeger, director of industrial design at Illinois University, has now been registered throughout the world.